A few of the girls’ latest favourite.

Their favourite drink, TEA.
Pokka Green Tea, and after the Singapore trip, they are ordering Teh-C everywhere they go (even at home!).
Both Daddy and I are tea drinker, I guess we kind of influenced them.

Their favourite food, pan-mee or any doughy noodle (lamien, farfalle). They could hardly finish half bowl of rice, but give them lamien, they can finish a full bowl, no problem.
And Zaria recently just loves corn.

Nail art is something they have discovered, and love.

And of course, they love drawing and painting.

Animals,

Butterflies,

Heartshape butterflies.

And sometimes drawing things they do, like Zaria’s hand with nail art, spot that?

This is their current phase.

We were talking about smacking and about why I sometimes smack them although I don’t like it.

Zara told me she doesn’t like to be smacked as well, and added, “When you smack me, the pain in my hand will go away very fast. But the pain in my heart will stay, it’ll take a long time before it goes away.”

o.O”

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Girls were going through my wedding album, which showed a very very slim me.

Zara : “How do you say get big with air?”
Me : “Don’t understand what you are asking.”
Zara : “How do you say get big with air? If no air, it’s deflated, if get big with air..?”
Me : “Inflated you mean?.”
Zara : “Yaya.. (pause) Last time you were deflated. Now you are inflated.”

o.O”

Then she pointed to Daddy’s photo.
Zara : “Last time you got nobody to love. That’s why you love Daddy. Now you got us to love, so you don’t love him any more.”

o.O” We have to remind ourselves not to quarrel in front of the girls any more.

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Not sure why she suddenly got annoyed with Daddy, and then she told me, “I think you should go and get a new boy friend. Then you can get married to your boy friend. Then I’ll have new Daddy also.”

o.O” I have to remind her, her Daddy, although with his flaws, loves them very much, and the fun things he does with them. Then only she remembered, “Yeah.. Daddy is a good Daddy.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ . ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I asked the girls what they wanted to do be when they grew up.
Zaria said, “I want to be a dentist.”
Zara said, “I think I want to be a doctor. But what does doctor do mummy?”
Told her about the many types of doctors, surgeons do operations, obs and gynaes do delivery, GPs give injection, medicine for people who are sick.
Zara said, “I think I don’t want to be doctor already. I think I want to be a teacher (actually, she’s been saying she wanted to be a teacher for a long time already). I like to talk, so I think it’s better I be a teacher. Then I can talk and talk and talk.”

o.O”

Zaria is very chatty nowadays, and very good in talking back, I’m sooo entertained by the things she said.

When she’s angry with us nowadays, i.e. for not giving her something she wanted, she would say to me, “I’m going to give you poison apple to eat.”
And to Daddy, “I’m going to put you in jail.”

When I raised my voice to her, she’ll ask me, “Why did you scold me?”

Once, she wasn’t eating properly during dinner, I kept asking her to just take the last bite. After some pestering, she reluctantly took the last bite, and then started coughing dramatically and said, “I think I’m going to vomit already, you better send me to the hospital.” o.O”

When she wants us to carry or piggy back her and we refused, she would say, But I’m very very very very very very very very…. very very very very tired.”

One day, we were out and I was piggy backing her, I have my hair bunned up, and when she wanted to lean on me, her face got pressed on my clip, making her uncomfortable; so she asked me to remove my hair clip.
I told her it was a hot day, and I preferred my hair bunned up.
“You know mum, you don’t look nice if you tie up your hair like that. Better you put your hair down” o.O”

When we went out one Sunday, Zaria sat in the front passenger seat, andＩsat behind. So she told us she’s now the mummy, I was the jiejie, and Zara the meimei.
To tease her, I asked, “You can be mummy meh? You don’t know how to write also.”
She replied, “I know wut, I can write my name already.”
“Ok, then you know how to read or not? Later must read bed time story you know.”
She replied, “It’s already late in the night. We cannot do any more reading. o.O”

Daddy normally does grocery shopping with the girls, and will give them an ice cream treat after shopping. I have been telling him off not to give them any more ice cream because they shouldn’t be eating ice cream so often.
One day, after grocery shopping, Zaria came straight to me and declared, “Mummy, today we didn’t eat ice cream!”.
Sensing a lie, I asked her, “What flavour did you eat?”
She replied without thinking, “I ate smarties flavour.”
Ok, for now, mummy is still smarter than her. 😛

I was meant to post this earlier, but so busy with so many things.

I think Zaria is very much influenced by Zara, because Zara draws a lot, Zaria too likes to join in and does her drawing, and I think she’s quite good for her age. I like it especially when she adds a story to her drawing, explaining what she’s drawing.

These were done by Zaria a month ago.
She said, “This is a princess with her beautiful bed. See the crown or not?”

“And then the wicked witch casting a spell, and the magic is zig zag zig zag coming out of the wand.”

And then during Chinese New Year, she started writing her name and adding ‘faces’ to it. Nobody actually taught her how to do it. o.O”
It’s become kind of like her signature.

She’s growing up so fast. And I’m enjoying her cute drawings and her cheeky conversations very much these days.

The little artist (the ‘crystal’ on her chest is a sticker ‘pendant’ Zara gave to Zaria. Since Zaria doesn’t have a necklace yet)

She’s no piano prodigy George Li, but I’m still proud of her.

A couple of days into her writing project, she started complaining when I asked her to do writing after dinner.
“Why every day I have to do writing writing writing only and not have fun like playing.”
I told her she had her play time from 1pm (after school) to 8pm (after dinner), isn’t that enough. She just sighed and went on to write.

Yesterday, I asked her, “Do you know why I’m asking you to do writing every day?”
Zara replied “So that my brain will be refreshed and when I grow up, I’ll never forget to write.”. *Her exact words. I think what she really meant was, she will remember events and won’t forget how to write.

On another non-related item, Zara is becoming a rather strong character. She rarely cries when I’m stern with her during homework or piano practice time, although sometimes I can see her in the verge of crying. However, she’ll cry if Zaria bullied her (the slightest punch or a tug of hair) or when she has a fall. More like cry for attention and TLC.

2 days ago, I spotted a cavity in her molar (her very first cavity), and when I pointed out to her, she started crying, and crying, like loosing something precious. Being the vain pot that she is, she doesn’t want to have rotten teeth, as she’s very proud of her nice pearly whites. I told her she’s getting cavity because she’s been having too many sweets since Christmas. So she made a vow, “I’ll eat sweet and I’ll jump day. Yesterday if I eat (ate) already, then today I don’t eat, and then tomorrow I’ll eat again.” Good girl.

*If you asked me how I remember what the girls said, I actually write them down in pieces of paper.

I just started a writing project with Zara this week.

I was worried about how she still mixes up d and b, writing j and s the other way round, and mixing capital letters and small letters in the same word (i.e. boG instead of dog, or dEb instead of bed), so I thought I should spend an hour each day with her, to get her to do some writing, what better way than to start something like a diary.

I’ll ask her to think about what she wants to write, then help her by
1) making sure she doesn’t mix capital and small letters in the same word,
2) spelling with phonics, or guide her on the spelling of sight words

After she’s finished writing, I’ll tell her the correct way of spelling some of the words that she’s spelled phonatically.

Here are her writing the last 2 days. Since she likes drawing, I ask her to attach a small picture about what she wrote.

25/1 – Both girls played with party poppers (they got from friend) without any adult’s supervision (although I’d told them before hand they can’t play with them on their own and told them what could happen if they did play on their own). I punished both by getting them to stand at the naughty corner, and when they started fighting at the naughty corner, I smacked both. She drew a sorry card for me (and drew herself on the naughty ‘chair). She crossed out the tear, and checked smile, and she said, “Having tears is not good, but smiling is good.”

26/1 – When I went to pick up the girls from school, we saw a mother’s car window being smashed by a thief who wanted to get to the handbag the mother left in the car. I like the smashed window she drew.

I hope by doing this, it’ll help with her writing.

Zaria kind of pick up the interest in arts from Zara. During the school holidays, when Zara spent time drawing, Zaria too would request for paper, and joined in. Sometimes she would ask us for help with drawing certain things, most of the time, she’s on her own.

While Zara made me a handbag, Zaria did this with scraps of colour papers.

Here are some of her pictures, drawn during the school holidays.

She said this is a family.

And here is another family drawing.

Here is one she asked, “You know what is this or not?”

I could only say, “It’s very beautiful. Can you tell me what this is?”
Do you know what this is?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Zaria said, “It’s a mermaid on a rock. See the long hair or not.”
Oh.. ok.

Here is another one she asked me to guess.

I was very confident, “A bird flying towards a mountain.”
She said, “Nooo..”
What do you think it was?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
According to her, it is “A bird flying to a diamond castle.” o.O”

And then one day, she was drawing a birthday cake for herself. She asked me to help with the knives, and then she did more doodling, and came over to surprise me with this.
Her first attempt in writing her name.

All these before she turned 3.

We just came back from Bali (will post later) 2 days back, and girls were rather happy to be home after being away from home for 7 days.

Zaria fell ill in Bali, and everytime when it’s medication time, she will be running away from us and hiding with her mouth covered, and coming out with all kinds of excuses.

“I don’t want to eat medicine. It’s so bitter.”

“You give me too much medicine, now I got stomach ache.”

We walked a lot in Bali in the hot weather to see sights and shop. This afternoon, when we wanted to go out and buy lunch, we walked passed my car and out to the gate. Zaria immediately pointed to my car, “We must take the car.”
I immediately told Daddy in Chinese that she’s ‘scared’ of walking after Bali, so Daddy teased her, “We’re walking out to buy lunch.”
Zaria immediately whined, “No, we must take the car. I’m too tired to walk.”

While looking at the photos from Bali with my nieces and all (since we went together), I asked Zaria, “Do you miss playing with your cousins?”
Zaria’s reply, “No. I don’t miss them. They are always disturbing me, they are all so irritating.”
o.O”

On our way back from school, Zara told me, “Lin Jing and I are in love you know. But he’s going to marry Rachel. Sigh”
I asked, “How do you know he’s in love with you?”
“CL told me that, CL told me Lin Jing loves me, but he cannot get married with me. He can only marry Rachel.”
Love can be really complicated for a 5 year old.
o.O”

Last week, when I picked her up on the last day of school, smiling happily she showed me a heart shape magic wand Lin Jing gave her. “See, Ling Jing gave me this. He loves me.”
I asked her just out of curiosity, “He only gave that to you?”
“No, he gave all the girls one.”
“Huh? So he gave everyone?”
Defensively, she said, “He’s very kind you see. He knows girls like magic wand. So he gave all the girls one.”
o.O

In the car on our way back, she told me, “I’m so sad, after today, I won’t be seeing Lin Jing again.” Lin Jing is a year older, and he’ll be in Primary one next year, in another school.
Soon after, she added, “Never mind, I’ll find a new boy friend. Mickel will be my boy friend next year. Luckily I have a replacement.”
o.O”